Quote:
Originally Posted by SleazyDream
17. Seems you've had a rough go in the industry. You went from being the "King of Toons" (per AVN) to being broke and selling off your content to larger companies, who then turned around and used your own content to beat you at your own game. In hindsight, what would you have done differently?
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First I want to correct a few things ;) I was dubbed
"The Godfather Of 3D Toons" and
I did not sell of my content due to being broke per say, I sold off the "company" after the hosting debacle...
After the dust settled from the Lela Hosting fiasco I was faced with a hard choice
I either had to REBUILD from scratch EVERYTHING, and HOPE I could retain most of my affiliates, and be able to compete with bigger programs with army's of affils, and shitload more money then me for overhead.
OR
Find a like minded company, give them the keys to my kingdom and retire from porn (which I had been in for almost 15 years by then) and go get a day job
the choice was a hard one, with no sites, no program my money went bye-bye, I really damn near did loose everything,
I recall sitting on the floor of my apartment while the repo people were taking my TV, my furniture, my lights were going off, my heat was off, everything was crumbling around me.
I had went to a buddies house to check my emails (I had gotten some cheap ass shared hosting from Hostgator lol) and I had this email from a dude in germany
"I hear you make 3D Toons, would you happen to have anything to sell?" was the email
I shit you not, in ALL those years I never even thought about selling content to other companies.... correction, I DID try that years back, but it NEVER went live, and I did make some content for a company here and there, but never on the scale that I ended up doing.
I had always thought, who the fuck is gonna buy content from me when they can just learn to make it themselves LMAO (Hindsight, hindsight, hindsight)
So I went through my backups, and I gathered up all the content I had made to date, it was about 400+ sets and I emailed the guy back with samples and whatnot, and I gave him the price, he bought it, and I said hmmm, I wonder....
I made promos for the 406 set package and I came here, and a few other boards.
Within 4 days I not only made enough money to get all my shit back, and get everything turned back on, but I was also able to move out of the closet I was 'living in' get joint custody of my daughter (cause I finally had room for her in the new house) but I also found someone to "take over" my company and old paysites, (BirdBucks.com) AND secured myself a full time gig for the next year.
By the time my gig was up with Birdbucks I was certain that what I needed to focus on from then on out was making and selling content for the other companies,
THAT'S where my strong point was, I could design a great paysite, I could make great content BUT I could not compete with the big companies who fly ads on all the boards, have thousands of affils and millions of hits of traffic
I honestly think that turning over my company and going the content provider route was the best choice I ever made in this biz, BUT I also know that If I didn't do all the things I did prior it might not have worked out this way.
I spent YEARS screaming at the top of my lungs that 3D Toons were not only a viable market, but a profitable market as well, if any of you remember 2000 - 2005 you may recall that during that time frame you only saw / found 3D porn by clicking on Cartoons / Anime it was a sub-niche and it never had to be,
I spent many many hours begging tgp owners and link list people to make a separate category for 3D Toons, same with the review sites.
I held "online classes" about keywords, and ad text for the niche, I did radio show after radio show about the subject of 3D Toons, I even was very active on an old board that was JUST for Cartoon webmasters (Even THEY didn't get the 3D Toon market!) I toiled and toiled and eventually people listened, cause what started out as VERY FEW paysites and 1 or 2 companies is now today literally much much more!
did they "beat me at my own game" ? I don't think of it that way, do some of them get the credit that I should have gotten? yes definitely lol, but again I'm not biter, I think everything is running where it should right now, in the end I was really just 6 years ahead of my time lol.
As for being broke... Fuck I'm STILL broke lol,
Past Family issues blew through all of my savings, and every time I get a nest egg built back up something else happens, and ALL I do these days is make and sell content, that's my sole income, I don't do side-jobs anymore Like I used to, when it works it works but when it don't it don't
What I really need is for some company to snatch me up and put me on their payroll lol I work sooooo much better when I DON'T have to do EVERYTHING myself lol
-Loki-